FSFE Newsletter - February 2013

Unitary fail for our society

We want software as a tool to help society. Software patents are a threat to
this as they add legal and financial risks to software development and
distribution by giving the patent holders legal power to completely prohibit
software developers from using patented ideas.

In December the European
Parliament has adopted a proposal to create a patent with unitary effect for
Europe (henceforth the "unitary patent"). In adopting the proposal, Members of the
European Parliament (MEPs) chose to disregard intense criticism of the proposal
from all sides of the debate. Already before the vote patent
lawyers, legal
experts, SMEs
and civil society groups such as FFII as well as FSFE all voiced
their concerns to MEPs. With the adoption, the European Parliament has given up
part of its power to shape Europe's innovation policy. That power will instead
fall to the European Patent Office (EPO), which has a track record of awarding
monopoly powers on the widest possible range of subject matter.

According to the European Parliament's website, "the international agreement
creating a unified patent court will enter into force on 1 January 2014 or
after thirteen contracting states ratify it, provided that UK, France and
Germany are among them. With your ongoing
help, FSFE will continue to inform companies and politicians about the
danger of software patents.

Italy does not want Free Software users as teachers

Pupils, as well as teachers, must have the possibility to
use Free Software at school. Unfortunately, many of the IT questions on the
questionnaire used to evaluate prospective teachers in Italy focus on a
single proprietary operating system and software exclusively available on that system.
The practice discriminates against Free Software users wishing to become teachers.
Our Italian team filed a legal complaint to
the Italian Ministry of Education about that. In association with AsSoLi, Wikimedia
Italia, the Free Software User Group Italia, the Associazione per
l'Informazione Geografica Libera (GFoss.it), the Italian Linux Society,
LibreItalia and 38 other groups we explain that the country's Ministry of
Education is putting Free Software at an unfair disadvantage.

In addition to the ongoing work in Italy, FSFE's education team did more in 2012 than ever
before to promote the use of Free Software in schools and universities. Guido
Arnold summarised
the team's work and its plans for 2013.

Fellowship interview: One of the most active DFD volunteers, Anna Morris,
tells
us why everyone should have a Free Software buddy to keep them on the
right path when problems are abundant, be proud of them when they have
learned something new, and help them contribute to more and better to Free
Software. We all have something to give!

FSFE helping VLC to play Blu-ray. The Video Lan Client (VLC) is the
world's most widely used Free Software player. For a long time its
developers have wanted to enable playing Blu-ray discs. They have asked Hadopi,
France's copyright authority, over one year ago for legal guidance on how to
handle the digital restrictions management
(DRM), but the copyright authority is yet to come up with an answer.
At an event organised by the French Ministry of Economy, Karsten Gerloff
supported the VLC developers criticising
France's strict interpretation of copyright which badly hinders
Free Software hackers.

FSFE on air: In the last weeks Torsten Grote gave a radio interview about
distributed systems, whereas Erik Albers and Matthias Kirschner talked about
Ubuntu Phone. Together with other interviews, they are available on the Fellowship wiki's audio page.

Fellowship representative Nikos Roussos reports from a small
hackathon at Athens Hackerspace. Around 40 developers showed up,
learning about Mozilla's new effort to liberate the mobile ecosystem
through Open Web Apps and Firefox OS.